The Auburn offense generated a season low of 271 yards of total offense against LSU on Saturday.
A more staggering number is the Tigers only rushed for meager 67 yards, although seven quarterback sacks affected that statistic.
Auburn Head Coach Alex Golesh attributes a lot of their struggles to not being able to block LSU’s formidable defensive line.
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“We didn’t play well up front,” Golesh said. “The challenge for us is to continue to grow there. We’ve got to find ways to play better there. We’ve got to find ways to creatively run the football and that’s involving everybody.”
Offensive Coordinator Joel Gordon said the offensive line protection was solid at times on Saturday. However, he felt they could not sustain their blocks long enough to slow down LSU’s dynamic edge players.
Gordon felt this set the offense back a handful of times when it seemed like they were having success on drives.
“That just hurt our ability to execute on first down, second down and stay out of third and long,” Gordon said. “We wound up in half of our third downs were 12 or more. That was devastating. We were not able to overcome that.”
Turning to the Ole Miss defense, Golesh said the Rebels are a veteran group. Gordon feels their linebacking corps can be disruptive to Auburn’s flow offensively, while also stating that Ole Miss presents a variety of looks that can confuse the Tigers.
Golesh believes this is another game, as most are, that will be won or lost in the trenches.
“We have got to do a really really good job of establishing the run game,” Golesh said. “Gotta do a really good job of not turning the football over, creating turnovers, and allowing ourselves to have extra possessions. I think it will be a really really big challenge for us.
“[F]or us we are going to have to get them worn down. Whatever it takes to do that. You got to break their will on offense to change that. You have to affect the game on offense to be able to create explosives, score points, get those guys to doubt themselves a little bit.”
Auburn leads the overall series against Ole Miss 35-13. However, the Rebels have won the last two meetings in 2022 and 2023.
Prior to that, the Tigers won six in a row, three of those in Oxford. Auburn and Ole Miss renew an old SEC West showdown from Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on Saturday at 11:45 a.m.
Auburn Undercover is an independent Auburn sports media company covering Auburn athletics, recruiting and insider news.
